Anybody make money raising feeder rodents/bugs?

I've heard that again lab strains are the best~ but I don't have any personal exp with them or have a specific name of a strain thats been "bragged" on~ sorry.

Packaging as bait worms is more profitable at $2.50 per 5 dozen as opposed to $10 per pound and there is a better market.

While sale of composters involves national marketing and sales are sporadic, bait sales have repeat customers and free word of mouth advertising and no shipping issues.

Bait sales program can also be expanded to a side market of bulk sales per pound to small scale chicken raisers in your local bait market area.

__________________
"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

What about being USDA certified so that you may sell to Zoo's? Is it hard to get the certification?

No certification required for rats and mice.

__________________

I was never asked to be USDA certified~ and until last summer I was a tax paying business registered with the State of California and the Federal Government as a Live feed producer of rodents and mice. I'm no longer registered with the State of California~ but I haven't told the feds yet that I stopped producing rodents for sale last summer. I figure I'm still going to have to pay my federal taxes for the first half of 07' come April~ and in 08' I plan to produce and sell more live prey so no point in trying to explain anything but that I didn't make much money last year and relocated.

Not sure how it will work once I start trying to call them farm livestock~ but I guess I should probably find out soon.

OK now here's a question for you - I've got 2 bins and My wonderful DH is making me 2 more for Christmas so I can increase my "colony."

One of the bins has big fat worms that aren't quite as prolific, and the other bin has smaller, thinner worms that breed like crazy and compost quicker, too. I got them from 2 different sources and kept the 2nd bin separate since they survived freezing conditions and so are pretty cold-hardy. I plan on looking at them more in detail very soon, but I was just thinking, would it be better to look towards the bigger worms for a bait market and the smaller worms towards a composting market? Or does it even matter?

__________________
Uncle Dutch Farms
Blogging from working city mom to homesteading housewife.
Rural Living Today
Encouragement for the Urban-to-Rural Transition
My review of the Piteba oil expeller

Raising rats for profit is an almost impossible undertaking. In my experience, its not worth the hassle if you have other opportunities available. In fact, I would recommend rabbits over rats any day of the week. You can still sell the rabbits as feeders if you like, but there are other markets for them and YOU can eat them.

I have pythons, so I raise a considerable number of rats. It is a long and arduous process in the beginning. You have to cull very heavily to get a product that acts like you want and does what you want. For instance, after years of culling, my rats no longer bite, fight, chew out of their tubs, or hoard babies. It probably took me about a dozen generations before I even thought that I might have something worth while.

I house my rats a little differently than described above. I still build racks to house them, but I use smaller tubs and house my rats in pairs. I know that some people will claim that is not the right way to do it, but my rats breed back faster, having a litter at least every 28 days, and since I have moved from harem breeding to pair breeding my mortality rate has dropped to an almost imperceptible number under 1%.

Also, I keep breeding stock from litters of 12. I believe that 12 is really the optimal number of pups that one mother can raise in a system where she is bred back immediately (male and female are house together at all times). One rack, with six tubs, has a goal of producing 72 babies per month.

The only real expense in breeding rats besides your time (and electric because they should really be heated in the winter and cooled in the summer AND well ventilated at ALL times) is the feed and the bedding.

Feed is a weird. You would think, oh, their rats, they can eat anything. Not true. Like every other factory farmed animal they have special dietary needs that they will produce best under. Rats should be fed a prepared laboratory block and nothing else. Mazuri (made by Purina and carried by some Tractor Supply stores), Harlan Teklad, Zeigler, Kent, and a few other companies make them. I have also used Doggy Bag dogfood from Tractor Supply with success and I know people that have used pig feed with success, but the pellets on pig feed are so small that they often go through the wire hopper onto the bedding below. I always though that it would be nice if someone could produce a cubed food that was made from grain and soy, with no corn or fillers, and had some seeds to raise the fat content (20% protein, 10% fat) and could be had for around $15 for a 50 pound bag. If you can find something like that you could become more profitable. Lab black is usually twice that price.

The next cost is the bedding. I use, and almost everyone uses, kiln dried, small, soft flake pine that has been screened multiple times to get the dust out. Pine in its natural form is no good for rats because of the oil in it. This is solved by kiln drying the pine before making chips out of it. The quality of the pine will make a difference in the health of your animals. You need to find a cheap source, but you do not want to skimp on quality here. I have always wondered if making your own pine chips could be a possibility. If you could make a high quality pine chip and sell the excess, you might be able to bring your pine cost to zero. Any time that the cost of something in your operation drops to zero your profitability increases substantially.

I know that I dug up an old post, but I find the top interesting.

The best way to get the rats you want is to breed them yourself. They reach breeding age in 16 weeks and can breed earlier if allowed. You can produce three generations of rats every year. Within four years you have culled your animals through 12 generations of selective breeding. Its a long process, but its worth it in the end.

Litter size, temperament, feed usage, docility, low mortality rate, health, hardiness, etc are all factors that I select for.

I had all the buyers I needed (raptor rescue centers, zoos, pet stores, etc) but all it took was a wife that didn't like the smell of ONE male mouse. They don't tell you this but mice often bite and males can't be housed together. They will literally fight to the death and from what I experienced, the males will attempt to bite off each other's family jewels so the winner lives while the loser dies. Didn't even get to the point of breeding rats. Just had to shelve it due to family objections.

__________________
Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

Rats are much easier to raise than mice and they smell LESS.

You can't put males together fresh from breeding with rats, but if they're not coming directly from a breeding age female they can be housed with other male rats.

I have used these racks to breed rats when I used a harem system. Four females and one male per tub was the most common arrangement, but I know people that would house them eight females to one male. This can be particularly useful if you are using a lot of pinks and pups.

Interesting to see people on here who are interested in this kind of thing...

I've considered breeding mice to this level before because I just love genetics and I really like mice... But I'd have to have some dedicated buyers, because I just couldn't do the CO2 thing...

I've ended up on YouTube before, just sifting through videos with people's breeder setups. Most are reptile breeder videos, which is just fine... I just have no interest in the snakes, only the mice.

I bred mice on a small scale for about a year when I was in college. A pet store a few towns over went out of business and I bought all their 10 gallon and 20 gallon long aquariums with covers and the water bottles/etc that they used for their displays for pennies on the dollar

I sold the mice to a small local pet store that did a lot of business with local wildlife rehabbers. Made enough at the time to cover the cost of raising the mice and to pay for my dog's food too.....

I tried Rats but they required more space and the pet store I sold to didn't really have a market for them, so wouldn't buy as many. So I sold out of the rats and added more mice . Then when I raised rabbits a few years back, I tried selling babies as feeders and got zero interest .

I guess it depends on the local market.

__________________

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miniature Bull Terriers
www.PatronusMiniBulls.com
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kiln dried lumber is getting harder to find due to the costs. I maintain gas meters in MT and very few mills are running kilns preferring to run green lumber or air dry.

Rat genetics are very interesting.

I've bred about a dozen different colors, ones with "dumbo" ears, ones with no tails, ones with curly fur, ones with no hair at all...its pretty much endless. I have even bred rats with two different color eyes!

If you like to tinker with genetics it is a very cool way to have some fun.

As far as gassing them goes it is probably the most humane way to kill them. I put a bunch of them in a plywood box I made. I throw in a handful of sunflower seeds and they start munching away. I let the CO2 fill the container slowly and they just go to sleep. After about 15 minutes the CO2 levels are high enough that they asphyxiate in their sleep. I can think of a million worse ways to go.

Then I just pack them up, vacuum seal them, and put them in the freezer for use at a later date.

During hatchling season for my snakes I end up feeding hundreds of baby rats per week to my snakes. I try to pull the smallest and weakest off the mom. I will also pull all but the biggest male pup. I try to leave the female with at least five babies, one male and the four best females. Then I put the cull the remaining babies as feeders. This way the mother recovers faster to birth again, but she doesn't have to dry up.

Anywho, this is cool for people that like to tinker with animals. Its a low cost hobby, you don't need much space, much time, or a lot of money. I like it.

As far as I know, there is a still a debate about how peaceful CO2 is when it comes to killing them... I know lots of breeders say that they can hear the critters panicking and scratching to get out, or squeaking in terror, before they go. Perhaps it's a difference in how much CO2 is put into the box at a time... But sounds like lots of them don't just "go to sleep" before they die, but they actually just suffocate to death. That's what I have an issue with. I'm a softie. I have pet mice because I like them... Suffocating or panicking just doesn't sound humane at all. If you could work it out with your ratios that they all actually fell asleep before kicking the bucket, that would be awesome.

I think mouse genetics are just as cool as rat genetics. I'm just not a big rat fan. They aren't "cute" to me like mice are (and their teeth are a lot bigger!)... You can get mice in a plethora of varieties now too... I do love the silkies and the long-hairs. Dark eyed whites are high in my list of faves. You get the white fur but without the "creepy" red eyes that so many people don't like... I've never heard of heterochromia in rats, how crazy!

Genetics are also one of the big perks of rabbits and chickens for me. They produce frequently enough and at high enough numbers to keep you interested, if you're working on a project to produce a new color, or just wanting to see what pops out when you cross random types.

And whoever said crickets dont stink hasn't smelled a tank full of them. They stink just as bad if not worse than mice in my opinion. Not sure I would like the escapees problem with any of these but that could be controlled.

__________________
U.S. Constitution -10th Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Here the zoo needs around 300 rats a week and around 30 thousand mice per month. Raptor center is up and down depending on the number of birds they're rehabbing. No way I could meet any of that demand.

__________________
Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

30,000 mice per month?! Hooooooly!! That's like.... 167 litters being born PER DAY if your mice have 6 babies per litter.

I would like to raise them for fun. 167 litters a day does NOT sound fun to me. It sounds like insane amounts of cleaning, and a HUGE barn of nothing but mice from wall to wall. Blech. No thanks!!

You would think though that pretty much nobody raises feeders on that scale, so they have to be buying from multiple sources... And if that's the case, a "small time" breeder, who was only getting, say, 20 litters a day, could still stand to make some good money selling feeders.

If you needed 20 litters a day, and each female was giving birth to a litter every 3 weeks, that would be 420 female mice that you would need in your breeding program. If you keep a 1.5 ratio in each colony, that's 84 bins you'd have with breeders. That's 840 babies per week that you'd need to switch from the breeder bins to grow-out bins... unless you're selling them right at weaning.

Eek. Yeah, that's still too many mice for me!!

I am mostly interested in color and fur variations. I would have fun with the herefords, brokens, whiterumps, dutch, tri-colors, and whatnot. But hundreds of babies per day leaves the fun category and just sounds like straight work. I wouldn't mind raising enough to sell for pets and feeders, but mice are not my main passion in life, so I wouldn't want to dedicate all my time to their care.

Silverflame, I'd bet that you could sell a good many mice to zoos as pre-killed, frozen.
Then you don't need the mice all at one, you could stockpile them a bit. So long as you could guarantee a number, size and quality every specific amount of time, you'd still be good.

__________________
A ship in the harbor may be safe, but that's not what ships are built for